the weight of it all
by LadyMoriel
Summary: Ashariel Tabris switches between enchanted rings as needed like everybody else, but there's one ring she never takes off-plain, undecorated, with no benefits whatsoever. Alistair noticed a while ago, but it's taken him a while to get up the nerve to ask about it. (At night in the tent they're now sharing probably isn't the best time, all things considered.)
"So I've been wondering something," Alistair says. Asha mumbles something against his shoulder that sounds vaguely interrogative, if sleepy, so he plunges on: "You don't have to answer, obviously, I'm not saying I'm jealous or something and I won't get all weird and suspicious if you don't want to say, because Maker knows you have a right to your privacy, and I don't want you to think _I_ think you owe me every little detail about your past—"

She pulls back a little to look at him, eyebrows drawing together. "You're babbling."

"Am I?" he says. "I mean, yeah, guess I do that sometimes. Can't imagine why I would be _now_ , though, that would be silly…"

"You babble when you're nervous, which means you're nervous about whatever you want to ask me."

Alistair winces. Sometimes, being in love with a woman who can always see through bullshit has its downsides. (In fairness, he's never been very good at bullshitting anyone, which is yet another reason he is not remotely cut out for kingship and politics.) "I wouldn't say _nervous_ ," he hedges. Nervously. "I just, you know, don't want you to think it's weird, or…get mad…"

She's frowning now, expression still sleepy but verging on irritated. "When do I ever get mad about questions?"

"…you get mad about stupid questions sometimes," he says, because yes, she's actually pretty even-tempered most of the time, but Alistair's not blind, and he can recognize anger simmering beneath a seemingly calm surface when he sees it. And Asha might be a short, pretty elf, but she is _remarkably_ vicious whenever she spars, which itself pales in comparison to her ferocity in battle.

Asha props herself up on one elbow, eyes narrowing (but one of her little braids is sticking out, too, bent where she was apparently sleeping on it, which is pretty adorable and not very intimidating). "I definitely _will_ get mad if you don't just spit it out."

Fair enough. "Your ring," he says before he loses his nerve. "Not—not your enchanted one, obviously, we've all got those, but I've just noticed…the plain one doesn't _do_ anything, and you never take it off, even though you could wear something else enchanted and…normally you're all about practicality, so…I was wondering. What it means to you."

She lies back down, eyes on the ceiling of the tent instead of him. "And you have a guess about what it means, or you would've just asked ages ago instead of stewing about it."

"I wasn't _stewing_ ," he says, trying to sound indignant and failing. Maker damn it, why does he always end up around really direct people who always want to bring things right out into the open instead of politely talking around anything potentially awkward? (Fine, that's an easy answer—because politics give him hives and he'd choose blunt people any day.) "It just sort of…looks like a wedding ring."

"That's because it is a wedding ring."

"…oh." And she never takes it off, even when they're being…intimate, and he'd be lying now if he said his heart wasn't sinking a little, accompanied by a scornful little voice in the back of his head asking, _what, you thought you'd_ ever _be anyone's first choice?_

She sighs. "It's probably not what you're thinking."

"I wasn't thinking anything."

"Well, I know _that_ ," she says, a hint of a smile in her voice.

"Hey," he protests, but he doesn't mind a little teasing. Teasing is good. He can work with that.

Asha holds up her hand, studying the ring in the dim firelight, and her smile fades. "You know at least a little about how Duncan recruited me."

"Asshole nobles in Denerim crashed a wedding in the alienage and you got in trouble for fighting back," he says, "and…actually, that's literally all I know."

"Well," she says, "this was my wedding ring. Is, I suppose; the ring didn't change when everything went wrong. My cousin and I were dragged off with some other girls, she was raped, my betrothed joined the rescue party, and I fought my way out and got almost everyone back to the alienage alive. Except the man I was supposed to marry, because they killed him."

"I'm so sorry," Alistair says. Nothing else seems appropriate.

"The thing is," she says, "I barely knew him. I'd only met him that morning and I didn't even want to get married—I was just going along with it because my father wanted me protected and I didn't really have other options. So it's not that I loved and lost him—maybe I would've grown to love him eventually, but as it was, I didn't know him enough to love him."

Alistair is, probably, a terrible person for being ever-so-slightly relieved that he doesn't have competition (much less so for being relieved that Asha at least didn't lose her first love in such an awful way). "But you kept the ring."

"Sometimes I need the reminder."

"Of what?" he asks, uneasy now for reasons that have nothing to do with possible past lovers.

She's silent for so long he thinks she isn't going to answer, but finally she says, "Where I come from. Who I am. The things people will do when they know no one will stop them. All that ugliness, what humans will do to people like me, or even other humans. And most of all, it's a reminder of everyone I couldn't save, back in the alienage and ever since."

" _That's_ what you—" He starts to sit up and Asha growls at him, clutching the blankets. He settles back down again, a little reluctantly, and turns on his side to look at her. "You can't blame yourself for what's happened."

She shrugs, a jerky motion, and the lines of her profile are tight as she stares upward. "Maybe not. But it happened. My betrothed was a good man and he died for me, and now I'm one of the last Gray Wardens, and it's on me to save as many people as I can. Anyone I can't save…that's on me." She holds up her hand again for a moment, rubbing the ring with her thumb, before letting her arm fall back to the blankets. "That's what it means. That I don't want anyone else to die because of me."

"That doesn't apply to bandits, I hope," Alistair jokes weakly.

Asha snorts. "Or evil cannibals, or evil cultists, or anybody else who's trying to kill us. I mean normal, decent people who just want to live their lives. And if we can't stop the Blight…"

"Yeah," Alistair says, because there's really not much else to say. He's had the same thought, more or less, that if he can save people and fails, he's nearly as guilty as whoever actually killed them. He really, really tries not to think about it much, because it'll paralyze him, but it's still there.

"Okay," he says after a moment, "but you know what though, it doesn't have to mean that. Or not just that, anyway, because yes, crushing responsibility that we can't really escape without dooming the world, _but_ —" He reaches over and twines his fingers with hers, and the thin metal band is warm against his skin. "This ring can remind you that there are good people, too, like your betrothed, who went after you even though he didn't know you, and he had to know it was dangerous but he chose it anyway because it was the right thing to do. And your family, the people you're doing this _for_ , not—not just the guilt for something that might never happen. All the people you _have_ helped, and everyone who's agreed to help us because it's right." (He's well aware that not everyone in camp is here for purely altruistic reasons, but that's not the point and anyway they're here regardless.) "And—and your friends. And, I dunno, I know I'm not some massive prize or anything, but…there's me. Us. That's all happened since you met Duncan too. " He takes a breath. "It means—it means you're not alone. Make your ring a reminder of that too, because it's true. You're not alone. Truly."

For a long moment she doesn't respond, and Alistair can feel himself panicking a little bit, scrambling for the right words, because if he can't convince her of this, he's _really_ failed—and it's true, whether he means as much to her as she means to him, whether his love is any good to her at all, she deserves to be able to believe this. If he can't do anything else for her, he needs her to know that she's not alone in this.

But then her hand tightens on his and she turns on her side to face him, her eyes locking with his in the dimness. Her gaze is fierce and intense, determination and protectiveness and something that is definitely at least a lot of affection, and it leaves him just a little bit breathless—like a blow to the chest, but in a good way.

"Okay," she says. "Yes. It means that too."

* * *

 _For multiple reasons, my ability to connect with and develop my RPG characters tends to vary widely, and one character I've had trouble with is my warden. (Yes, I'm only now playing Dragon Age: Origins, because I am the Slowest Gamer Ever.) As a little bit of roleplaying, though, I've kept her wedding ring equipped since I started playing, even though it's taking up a slot I could be using for something actually helpful, and I figured I might as well expand on the reasoning behind that and try to get to know her better in the process. Plus, as I keep saying, I'm trying to write and finish more short fics this year, so this seemed like a good exercise._


End file.
